Timeline of science and engineering in the Muslim world

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This timeline of science and engineering in the Muslim world covers the time period from the eighth century AD to the introduction of European science to the Muslim world in the nineteenth century. All year dates are given according to the Gregorian calendar except where noted.

Contents

Eighth Century

Astronomers and astrologers
Biologists, neuroscientists, and psychologists
Mathematics

Ninth Century

The Conica of Apollonius of Perga, "the great geometer", translated into Arabic in the ninth century Conica of Apollonius of Perga fol. 162b and 164a.jpg
The Conica of Apollonius of Perga, "the great geometer", translated into Arabic in the ninth century
Chemistry
Mathematics
Miscellaneous

Tenth Century

By this century, three systems of counting are used in the Arab world. Finger-reckoning arithmetic, with numerals written entirely in words, used by the business community; the sexagesimal system, a remnant originating with the Babylonians, with numerals denoted by letters of the arabic alphabet and used by Arab mathematicians in astronomical work; and the Indian numeral system, which was used with various sets of symbols. Its arithmetic at first required the use of a dust board (a sort of handheld blackboard) because "the methods required moving the numbers around in the calculation and rubbing some out as the calculation proceeded."

Chemistry
Mathematics

Eleventh Century

Mathematics

Twelfth Century

Cartography
Mathematics

Thirteenth Century

Chemistry
Mathematics
Astronomy
Manuscript of al-Mulakhkhas fi al-Hay'ah in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art Khalili Collection Islamic Art mss 1164 fol 19b-20a.jpg
Manuscript of al-Mulakhkhas fi al-Hay’ah in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art
Miscellaneous

Fourteenth Century

Astronomy
Mathematics

Fifteenth Century

Mathematics

Seventeenth century

Mathematics

Modern science

Muslim scientists made significant contributions to modern science. These include the development of the electroweak unification theory by Abdus Salam, development of femtochemistry by Ahmed Zewail, invention of quantum dots by Moungi Bawendi, and development of fuzzy set theory by Lotfi A. Zadeh. Other major contributions include introduction of Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation by Mehran Kardar, the development of Circuit topology by Alireza Mashaghi, and the first description of Behçet's disease by Hulusi Behçet.

Contributions of muslim scientists have been recognised by 4 Nobel Prizes and 2 fields medals. Abdus Salam was the first muslim to win a Nobel Prize in science and Maryam Mirzakhani was the first muslim to win a fields medal in mathematics.

See also

Related Research Articles

Thābit ibn Qurra, was a polymath known for his work in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and translation. He lived in Baghdad in the second half of the ninth century during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Science in the medieval Islamic world</span> Science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age

Science in the medieval Islamic world was the science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Córdoba, the Abbadids of Seville, the Samanids, the Ziyarids and the Buyids in Persia and beyond, spanning the period roughly between 786 and 1258. Islamic scientific achievements encompassed a wide range of subject areas, especially astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Other subjects of scientific inquiry included alchemy and chemistry, botany and agronomy, geography and cartography, ophthalmology, pharmacology, physics, and zoology.

Abū al-Ḥassan, Aḥmad Ibn Ibrāhīm, al-Uqlīdisī was a mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age, possibly from Damascus, who wrote the earliest surviving book on the use of decimal fractions with Hindu–Arabic numerals, Kitāb al-Fuṣūl fī al-Ḥisāb al-Hindī, in Arabic in 952. The book is well preserved in a single 12th century manuscript, but other than the author's name, original year of publication and the place (Damascus) we know nothing else about the author: after an extensive survey of extant reference material, mathematical historian Ahmad Salīm Saʿīdān, who discovered the manuscript in 1960, could find no other mention of him. His nickname al-Uqlīdisī was commonly given to people who sold manuscript copies of Euclid's Elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Khwarizmi</span> 9th-century Persian polymath

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, often referred to as simply al-Khwarizmi, was a polymath who produced vastly influential Arabic-language works in mathematics, astronomy, and geography. Hailing from Khwarazm, he was appointed as the astronomer and head of the House of Wisdom in the city of Baghdad around 820 CE.

al-Battani Islamic astronomer and mathematician (died 929)

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Jābir ibn Sinān al-Raqqī al-Ḥarrānī aṣ-Ṣābiʾ al-Battānī, usually called al-Battānī, a name that was in the past Latinized as Albategnius, was an astronomer, astrologer and mathematician, who lived and worked for most of his life at Raqqa, now in Syria. He is considered to be the greatest and most famous of the astronomers of the medieval Islamic world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Qabisi</span> 10th century Arabian astrologer

Abu al-Saqr Abd al-Aziz ibn Uthman ibn Ali al-Qabisi, generally known as Al-Qabisi,, and sometimes known as Alchabiz, Abdelazys, Abdilaziz, was a Muslim astrologer, astronomer, and mathematician.

Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Habib ibn Sulayman ibn Samra ibn Jundab al-Fazari was an Arab philosopher, mathematician and astronomer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī</span> Persian mathematician (1265–1318)

Kamal al-Din Hasan ibn Ali ibn Hasan al-Farisi or Abu Hasan Muhammad ibn Hasan ) was a Persian Muslim scientist. He made two major contributions to science, one on optics, the other on number theory. Farisi was a pupil of the astronomer and mathematician Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, who in turn was a pupil of Nasir al-Din Tusi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaghmini</span> Arab physician, astronomer and author

Mahmūd ibn Muḥammad ibn Umar al-Jaghmini or 'al-Chaghmīnī', or al-Jaghmini, was a 13th or 14th-century Arab physician, astronomer and author of the Qanunshah a short epitome of by Avicenna in Persian, and Mulakhkhas (Summary), a work on astronomy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world</span> Overview of the role of mathematics in the Golden Age of Islam

Mathematics during the Golden Age of Islam, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, was built on Greek mathematics and Indian mathematics. Important progress was made, such as full development of the decimal place-value system to include decimal fractions, the first systematised study of algebra, and advances in geometry and trigonometry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astronomy in the medieval Islamic world</span> Period of discovery in the Middle Ages

Medieval Islamic astronomy comprises the astronomical developments made in the Islamic world, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age, and mostly written in the Arabic language. These developments mostly took place in the Middle East, Central Asia, Al-Andalus, and North Africa, and later in the Far East and India. It closely parallels the genesis of other Islamic sciences in its assimilation of foreign material and the amalgamation of the disparate elements of that material to create a science with Islamic characteristics. These included Greek, Sassanid, and Indian works in particular, which were translated and built upon.

The three brothers Abū Jaʿfar, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir ; Abū al‐Qāsim, Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir and Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir, were Persian scholars who lived and worked in Baghdad. They are collectively known as the Banū Mūsā.

Ibrahim ibn Sinan was a mathematician and astronomer who belonged to a family of scholars originally from Harran in northern Mesopotamia. He was the son of Sinan ibn Thabit and the grandson of Thābit ibn Qurra. Like his grandfather, he belonged to a religious sect of star worshippers known as the Sabians of Harran.

Abū'l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Qurashī al-Qalaṣādī was a Muslim Arab mathematician from Al-Andalus specializing in Islamic inheritance jurisprudence. Franz Woepcke stated that al-Qalaṣādī was known as one of the most influential voices in algebraic notation for taking "the first steps toward the introduction of algebraic symbolism''. He wrote numerous books on arithmetic and algebra, including al-Tabsira fi'lm al-hisab.

This is a timeline of pure and applied mathematics history. It is divided here into three stages, corresponding to stages in the development of mathematical notation: a "rhetorical" stage in which calculations are described purely by words, a "syncopated" stage in which quantities and common algebraic operations are beginning to be represented by symbolic abbreviations, and finally a "symbolic" stage, in which comprehensive notational systems for formulas are the norm.

The Golden Age of Islam, which saw a flourishing of science, notably mathematics and astronomy, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, had a notable Indian influence.

Na‘īm ibn Mūsā was a mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age and a pupil of Thabit Ibn Qurra. Na'im was from Baghdad and lived in the second half of the 9th century. He was the son of Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir, the oldest of the three brothers Banu Musa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Adami</span> Astronomer of medieval Islam

ʿAbū ʿAlī al‐Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al‐Ādamī was a maker of scientific instruments who wrote an extant work on vertical sundials, Techniques, Walls, and the Making of Sundials. The manuscript, which is held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, contains tables that enabled the drawing of lines to show any desired angle of latitude. The surviving copy of al-Adami's 10th century manuscript (Arabe 2506,1 dates from the 15th century, which King has suggested was written either by al-Adami or by a contemporary, Sa'id ibn Khafif al-Samarqandi. The tables on folios. 31v–33v were intended to be used in the construction of a vertical sundial.

Yusuf al-Khuri, also known as Yusuf al-Khuri al-Qass, was a Christian priest, physician, mathematician, and translator of the Abbasid era.

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Arabic Mathematics at the University of St-Andrews, Scotland
  2. Rashed, R (1994). The development of Arabic mathematics: between arithmetic and algebra. London, England.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. 1 2 "Various AP Lists and Statistics". Archived from the original on 28 July 2012. Retrieved 9 November 2006.
  4. Ragep, Sally P. (2007). "Jaghmīnī: Sharaf al‐Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al‐Jaghmīnī al‐Khwārizmī". In Thomas Hockey; et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. New York: Springer. pp. 584–5. ISBN   978-0-387-31022-0. (PDF version)
  5. "Celestial globe". National Museums Scotland. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  6. Savage-Smith, Emilie (1985). Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction, and Use. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 67.
  7. Savage-Smith, Emilie (1985). Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction, and Use. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 69.
  8. Savage-Smith, Emilie (1985). Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction, and Use. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 43.

Sources